Ow.

Peter went out rowing first thing this morning. Luckily the weather was dry for his jaunt but it has been raining for most of the rest of the day. I haven't done much except a bit of cleaning and tidying up. 

After yesterday's hospital visit the outcome of which left me feeling quite optimistic I came down to earth with a bump when I realised there was SOMETHING WRONG with one of my teeth. One of my molars which was next to the one I lost a few years ago, has literally cracked under the strain of being sole chewer on that side of my mouth. The tooth is mostly filling and a strange feeling yesterday evening lead me to believe that the front of the tooth is cracked at the base. So long as it isn't touched and I keep taking painkillers for the nagging pain it is bearable but realistically I feel that tooth is doomed. I rang the dentist first thing and have an appointment on Monday morning. I expect I will return home with one less tooth. I feel that I am rapidly turning into a toothless old crone. The thought of wearing dentures is so shocking because I don't even feel middle aged (though at nearly 60 I ought to reassess my self image). One advantage of being awake for half the night is that I hear some interesting programmes on BBC World Service. The other night I listened to an interesting discussion on ageing from the LSE. The general consensus was that 'old' is somewhere after 80 so I've a few years to go.  Another interesting fact that caught my attention was that the number of babies being born globally has remained the same for the last 5 years. The continuing increase in population is due to less people dying in middle age. So eventually it will even out and we will have to work out how to share the world's resources fairly. Remember the recent report that said 1/3 of the world's food is lost before it can be eaten? We are always being told about the amount of food being thrown away by households but most of the food is lost due to poor harvesting, transport and storage. Surely we can solve those problems.